Long planned as a “mission” for Nato, not to mention the ever-zealous French, whose colonial lost causes remain on permanent standby, the war on Africa became urgent in 2011 when the Arab world appeared to be liberating itself from the Mubaraks and other clients of Washington and Europe. The hysteria this caused in imperial capitals cannot be exaggerated. Nato bombers were dispatched not to Tunis or Cairo but Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi ruled over Africa’s largest oil reserves. With the Libyan city of Sirte reduced to rubble, the British SAS directed the “rebel” militias in what has since been exposed as a racist bloodbath.

Almost certainly the consequence of a French/US attack on Mali on 13 January, a siege at a gas complex in Algeria ended bloodily, inspiring a 9/11 moment in David Cameron. The former Carlton TV PR man raged about a “global threat” requiring “decades” of western violence. He meant implantation of the west’s business plan for Africa, together with the rape of multi-ethnic Syria and the conquest of independent Iran.

Cameron has now ordered British troops to Mali, and sent an RAF drone, while his verbose military chief, General Sir David Richards, has addressed “a very clear message to jihadists worldwide: don’t dangle and tangle with us. We will deal with it robustly” – exactly what jihadists want to hear. The trail of blood of British army terror victims, all Muslims, their “systemic” torture cases currently heading to court, add necessary irony to the general’s words. I once experienced Sir David’s “robust” ways when I asked him if he had read the courageous Afghan feminist Malalai Joya’s description of the barbaric behaviour of westerners and their clients in her country. “You are an apologist for the Taliban” was his reply. (He later apologised).

These bleak comedians are straight out of Evelyn Waugh and allow us to feel the bracing breeze of history and hypocrisy. The “Islamic terrorism” that is their excuse for the enduring theft of Africa’s riches was all but invented by them. There is no longer any excuse to swallow the BBC/CNN line and not know the truth. Read Mark Curtis’s Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam (Serpent’s Tail) or John Cooley’s Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Pluto Press) or The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski (HarperCollins) who was midwife to the birth of modern fundamentalist terror. In effect, the mujahedin of al-Qaida and the Taliban were created by the CIA, its Pakistani equivalent, the Inter-Services Intelligence, and Britain’s MI6.

Those whom the gods love die young: are they trying to tell me something? Due to an inexplicable discontinuity in space-time, on Sunday I turned 50. I have petitioned the relevant authorities, but there's nothing they can do.

So I will use the occasion to try to explain the alien world from which I came. To understand how and why we are now governed as we are, you need to know something of that strange place.

I was born into the third tier of the dominant class: those without land or capital, but with salaries high enough to send their children to private schools. My preparatory school, which I attended from the age of eight, was a hard place, still Victorian in tone. We boarded, and saw our parents every few weeks. We were addressed only by our surnames and caned for misdemeanours. Discipline was rigid, pastoral care almost non-existent. But it was also strangely lost.

A few decades earlier, the role of such schools was clear: they broke boys' attachment to their families and re-attached them to the institutions – the colonial service, the government, the armed forces – through which the British ruling class projected its power. Every year they released into the world a cadre of kamikazes, young men fanatically devoted to their caste and culture. .......

“Our vision of the Communitarian Socialism of Living Well is based on rights and not on the market. It is based on the full realization of human happiness of peoples and populations, through the full complementarity of the rights of peoples, persons, states and Mother Earth”

On December 21, at a solstice celebration in Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes, Bolivian president Evo Morales introduced the “Manifesto of Isla del Sol.” His talk, translated below, includes the full text of the manifesto.

“Vivir Bien” has long been a key element in Morales’ political philosophy. The phrase literally means “living well,” but its meaning in Bolivia is closer to “living in the right way” or “living appropriately, so that others may also live.”

Thanks to Richard Fidler for the translation, which was first published, along with his introduction and commentary, on Life on the Left.

* * *

Ten Commandments to confront capitalism and construct the culture of life:

“Our vision of the Communitarian Socialism of Living Well is based on rights and not on the market. It is based on the full realization of human happiness of peoples and populations, through the full complementarity of the rights of peoples, persons, states and Mother Earth”

On December 21, at a solstice celebration in Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes, Bolivian president Evo Morales introduced the “Manifesto of Isla del Sol.” His talk, translated below, includes the full text of the manifesto.

“Vivir Bien” has long been a key element in Morales’ political philosophy. The phrase literally means “living well,” but its meaning in Bolivia is closer to “living in the right way” or “living appropriately, so that others may also live.”

Thanks to Richard Fidler for the translation, which was first published, along with his introduction and commentary, on Life on the Left.

* * *

Ten Commandments to confront capitalism and construct the culture of life

Nirbhaya (which means fearless in Hindi) was studying physiotherapy and worked long overnight hours at a call centre just to afford school. She was from a poor family, but always hoped to make something better of her life. She was described as one of the brightest students in her classes.

Dangerously out of touch

Under pressure from street protesters and global interest in this case, the government moved to set up a judicial commission to look into tougher laws to protect women from sexual harassment and rape – this is an important first step. But the horrible truth is that what happened to Nirbhaya will happen again. And again. And again. Why? Because too many people in authority continue to blame the victim. Until there's a more fundamental shift in these attitudes, Nirbhaya's story will simply repeat. Here are just a few of the worst examples:

Manohar Lal Sharma, the lawyer representing three of the accused, suggested that Nirbhaya wouldn't have been raped if she were more virtuous:

"Even an underworld don would not like to touch a girl with respect." ..........

“The press is the chief democratic instrument of freedom.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville

The wellspring of liberty runs dry without the free flow of information. The Egyptian government shut down their Internet on January 28, 2011, just after the Associated Press published video of a protestor being shot by riot police. This came as a shock to the global community; censorship of such magnitude is only rivaled by nations like North Korea (where subjects have no internet access). A global trend of authoritarianism is emerging, and the West is not immune (and perhaps even leading the charge).

In Radical Priorities, Noam Chomsky and C.P. Otero wrote:

“The totalitarian system of thought control is far less effective than the democratic one, since the official doctrine parroted by the intellectuals at the service of the state is readily identifiable as pure propaganda, and this helps free the mind.” In contrast, “the democratic system seeks to determine and limit the entire spectrum of thought by leaving the fundamental assumptions unexpressed. They are presupposed but not asserted.”

Noam Chomsky tersely put it this way in in Chronicles of Dissent: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

If anyone is clearest about what Chavez’s absence means and what it could mean in the future, it is the grassroots activists and revolutionaries in Venezuela. While private international and national media paint a picture of hopelessness, economic chaos, a power vacuum and power struggles in Venezuela, the grassroots are experiencing a different reality, and have a much more positive outlook for the future. Venezuelanalysis.com talked to five activists from different areas, who gave their opinion on the impact Chavez’s absence has had, and their expectations for the future.

Consolidating the revolution, and all its achievements, keep working- I think that’s what Chavez expects of us. Of course, we’d like him to be here, and emotionally, in December, we were affected, were sad. But we also know that Chavez is human, and whether he can continue now or not, we have to understand that for whatever reason, one day he might not continue. We have to be prepared for that.

The opposition believes that when Chavez as a person disappears, the revolution is over, and we have to show them that it’s not like that."

Chavez’s absence has affected us at Mission Ribas, however we know, and it’s not a secret for anyone, that united we’ll be a take off point for the revolution. Even though those of us who make up Mission Ribas are very young, we have the political, intellectual, and economic capacity to support and develop this revolutionary process.

Thus we had a profit-driven imperial rule that helped precipitate the great famine in northern China, 1876-1879, resulting in the death of some thirteen million. At about that same time the Madras famine in India took the lives of as many as twelve million while the colonial forces grew ever richer. And thirty years earlier, the great potato famine in Ireland led to about one million deaths, with another desperate million emigrating from their homeland. Nothing accidental about this: while the Irish starved, their English landlords exported shiploads of Irish grain and livestock to England and elsewhere at considerable profit to themselves.

These occurrences must be seen as something more than just historic abnormalities floating aimlessly in time and space, driven only by overweening impulse or happenstance. It is not enough to condemn monstrous events and bad times, we also must try to understand them. They must be contextualized in the larger framework of historical social relations.

What we are witnessing is not an irrational output from a basically rational society but the converse: the "rational" (to be expected) output of a fundamentally irrational system. Does this mean these horrors are inescapable? No, they are not made of supernatural forces. They are produced by plutocratic greed and deception.

So, if the aberrant is the norm and the horrific is chronic, then we in our fightback should give less attention to the idiosyncratic and more to the systemic. Wars, massacres and recessions help to increase capital concentration, monopolize markets and natural resources, and destroy labor organizations and popular transformative resistance.

The vice-president and ministers marched with up to a million people today to defend the Bolivarian revolution on Democracy Day, while the opposition march turned out to be a small rally. Further, sectors of the far right have called on the armed forces to resist what they referred to as the “invasion” of “Castro-communism” in Venezuela.

Today’s marches commemorate 23 January 1958, when a civic-military movement overthrew the Marcos Jimenez dictatorship. However, this year the opposition first called a march for the date, to reject what it has called the “unconstitutional” measures taken by the national government, as President Chavez wasn’t able to be present at his swearing-in ceremony on 10 January while he was recovering from an operation for cancer.

In response, the PSUV also convoked a large march, together with other movements and organisations, with the slogan “The people will never be betrayed again”.

Africans produce what they do not consume and consume what they do not produce. To put it differently, the consumer lifestyles of most Westerners is dependent on the cheap exploitation of Africans and African wealth whilst most Africans remain impoverished due to the structural linkages of this relationship. Much has not changed since the era of colonialism.

Ama Biney

On the 52nd anniversary of the vicious assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Ama Biney reflects on both the current state of the DRC and Africa, arguing that the Congo is not only a ‘world problem’ but remains critical to the future unity of Africa due to its resources and geo-strategic location

"My dear Patrice,

On the 52nd anniversary of your brutal assassination on 17 January 1961, your people of 60 million have continued to see no peace, justice, nor liberation. The people have continued to profusely bleed to death. Rape has become a weapon of war against thousands of Congolese women. Between August 1998 and April 2007, up to six million Congolese have died through unspeakable atrocities, disease, starvation and malnutrition. This figure is almost the same number as the Jews who died in the Holocaust, which leads one to ask: is it because they are black skinned Africans that global humanity responds with paralysis and indifference? If they had been Europeans, would the killings have been averted or lessened? Surely the unfolding catastrophe in the Congo is of similar proportions to that of the Cambodian and Rwanda genocides, the Vietnam War, the wars in Europe known as the First World War, Second World War and the Balkans war? If you were alive today what would you say to the Congolese women who have been gang raped by fellow Congolese? How would you comfort the children left orphaned by the multitude of vicious male warlords seeking self-aggrandisement and personal riches from the wealth of the Congo? What would you say to the hundreds of street children, uneducated and unemployed youths who were enticed into the rebel armies to commit horrific crimes against fellow Congolese? How is it possible that after 50 odd years of so-called independence the life expectancy of a Congolese woman is 47 years and that of a Congolese man is 42 years?

CONGO’S RICHES VITAL TO WESTERN LIFESTYLES

Che Guevara was correct when he wrote in his diary in 1965 that ‘the Congo problem was a world problem.’ Furthermore, Che could also see that ‘Victory would have repercussions throughout the continent, as would defeat’. Indeed the Congo remains a ‘world problem’ when it continues to provide 64 percent of the world’s reserves of coltan used in cellular phones, laptops, pacemakers, video cameras, jet engines, prosthetic devices, rockets, hearing aids, amongst other products. Most of these products are only affordable in the developed world, yet the raw material is to be located in the Congo. This reinforces the reality that Africans produce what they do not consume and consume what they do not produce. To put it differently, the consumer lifestyles of most Westerners is dependent on the cheap exploitation of Africans and African wealth whilst most Africans remain impoverished due to the structural linkages of this relationship. Much has not changed since the era of colonialism. In the 19th century, the Congolese were being forced by the Belgians in savage conditions to produce quotas of rubber from which up to 10 million Congolese died and many lost their limbs for failure to meet production quotas. Now the pillage, plunder and looting of coltan by Congolese rebel groups with their backers in Rwanda, Uganda, US, Britain and various Western multi-national companies profit enormously from this wealth at the expense of the Congolese people who see little of this wealth invested in their country. As individuals upgrade their cellular phones as a matter of ‘natural’ entitlement, it seems ‘blood diamonds’ now co-exist with ‘blood coltan.’"

Patrice Lumumba, The Sacrifice of a True African Leader
By Honourable Saka

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Patrice Lumumba (2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961), the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Congo Republic was murdered by a CIA- sponsored plot, over 50 years ago.

We must move forward, striking out tirelessly against imperialism. From all over the world we have to learn lessons which events afford. Lumumba's murder should be a lesson for all of us”. — Che Guevara, 1964.

“Dead, living, free, or in prison on the orders of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage where we are regarded from the outside…” — Patrice Lumumba, October 1960.

Introduction

The truth surrounding the brutal murder of Patrice Lumumba is an embarrassing event which, when exposed to the African youth of today, will definitely send the US government scratching its head. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had a troubled history since the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Currently there is conflict in the eastern DRC. But who are the main actors in the conflict this time? African leaders, it is important to remember history so that you can appreciate what is going on today in Africa and the rest of the world.